Part 7 (2/2)
”Maude Lille--you know her?”
”I think not.”
”You met her here--a journalist.”
”Quite so, a strange career.”
”Mr. Harris, a clubman, is coming, and the Stanley Cheevers.”
”The Stanley Cheevers!” said Flanders with some surprise. ”Are we going to gamble?”
”You believe in that scandal about bridge?”
”Certainly not,” said Flanders, smiling. ”You see I was present. The Cheevers play a good game, a well united game, and have an unusual system of makes. By-the-way, it's Jackson who is very attentive to Mrs.
Cheever, isn't it?”
”Quite right.”
”What a charming party,” said Flanders flippantly. ”And where does Maude Lille come in?”
”Don't joke. She is in a desperate way,” said Mrs. Kildair, with a little sadness in her eyes.
”And Harris?”
”Oh, he is to make the salad and cream the chicken.”
”Ah, I see the whole party. I, of course, am to add the element of respectability.”
”Of what?”
She looked at him steadily until he turned away, dropping his glance.
”Don't be an a.s.s with me, my dear Flanders.”
”By George, if this were Europe I'd wager you were in the secret service, Mrs. Kildair.”
”Thank you.”
She smiled appreciatively and moved about the studio, giving the finis.h.i.+ng touches. The Stanley Cheevers entered, a short fat man with a vacant fat face and a slow-moving eye, and his wife, voluble, nervous, overdressed and pretty. Mr. Harris came with Maude Lille, a woman, straight, dark, Indian, with great ma.s.ses of somber hair held in a little too loosely for neatness, with thick, quick lips and eyes that rolled away from the person who was talking to her. The Enos Jacksons were late and still agitated as they entered. His forehead had not quite banished the scowl, nor her eyes the scorn. He was of the type that never lost his temper, but caused others to lose theirs, immovable in his opinions, with a prowling walk, a studied antagonism in his manner, and an impudent look that fastened itself unerringly on the weakness in the person to whom he spoke. Mrs. Jackson, who seemed fastened to her husband by an invisible leash, had a hunted, resisting quality back of a certain desperate dash, which she a.s.sumed rather than felt in her att.i.tude toward life. One looked at her curiously and wondered what such a nature would do in a crisis, with a lurking sense of a woman who carried with her her own impending tragedy.
As soon as the company had been completed and the incongruity of the selection had been perceived, a smile of malicious antic.i.p.ation ran the rounds, which the hostess cut short by saying:
”Well, now that every one is here, this is the order of the night: You can quarrel all you want, you can whisper all the gossip you can think of about one another, but every one is to be amusing! Also every one is to help with the dinner--nothing formal and nothing serious. We may all be bankrupt to-morrow, divorced or dead, but to-night we will be gay--that is the invariable rule of the house!”
Immediately a nervous laughter broke out and the company chattering began to scatter through the rooms.
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